Revision as of 17:08, 8 April 2017

Cloning a Raspberry Pi disk onto a image file can be quite useful, as it will safe you the time of installing the whole system, applications, etc. And you can have a copy of an disk in an image, ready to be cloned onto another SD-card and ran.

the following steps will show how do this.

Resizing the partitions

Shutdown the Pi and remove its SD-card.

Insert the SD-card to you computer and run gparted software, as sudo.

Select the SD-card (/dev/mmcblk/)

Select the larger partition (the one with loads of empty space) and reduce the empty space, leaving a bit of empty space (around 2000 MB) for temporary files,caches,log files,etc.

When done close the Gparted

Clone

from SD-card to image file

sudo fdisk -l /dev/mmcblk0

Will give the length of each partition, in my case it is:

Disk /dev/mmcblk0: 3.8 GiB, 4025483264 bytes, 7862272 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x0004a452

Device         Boot Start     End Sectors  Size Id Type
/dev/mmcblk0p1         16   97727   97712 47.7M  b W95 FAT32
/dev/mmcblk0p2      97728 3766271 3668544  1.8G 83 Linux

What to look for:

Start and End units are sectors,
sector size is 512 bytes

To clone use the dd cloning tool.

The sector (or block size) bs will be the value of the sector size
count will be given the End of the last device (/dev/mmcblk0p2) + 1: 3766271+1 .
bs=512 is the sector size
if=/dev/mmcblk0 from /dev/mmcblk0
to image file (rpi.img) of=rpi.img

sudo dd if=/dev/mmcblk0 of=rpi.img bs=512 count=3766272

When done eject the SD-card and you'll have your Raspberry Pi image clone to a file

Clone file to card

sudo dd bs=4M if=rpi.img of=/dev/mmcblk0

from image file to card

Insert the new card, to where you'll clone the image

sudo dd bs=4M if=rpi.img of=/dev/mmcblk0

Once done,

eject the new card
insert it in the Pi
connect the network port
power the Pi

If all is good you will see crazy blinking leds. Wait for the them to stop and look for the Pi's IP address with

nmap -sP 192.168.1.1-255

@@ Line 36: / Line 36: @@
 /dev/mmcblk0p2      97728 3766271 3668544  1.8G 83 Linux
 </pre>
+What to look for:
+* '''Start''' and '''End''' units are sectors,
+* '''sector size''' is  512 bytes
-The "Start" and "End" units are sectors, and notice the sector size is given, 512 bytes.
+To clone use the <code>dd</code> cloning tool.
+* The sector (or block size) <code>bs</code> will be the value of the '''sector size'''
+* <code>count</code> will be given the '''End''' of the last device (/dev/mmcblk0p2) + 1: 3766271+1 .
+* <code>bs=512</code> is the '''sector size'''
+* <code>if=/dev/mmcblk0</code> from /dev/mmcblk0
+* to image file (rpi.img) </code>of=rpi.img</code>
+ sudo dd if=/dev/mmcblk0 of=rpi.img bs=512 count=3766272
-You can start cloning using the <code>dd</code> cloning tool, the sector (or block size) <code>bs</code> and <code>count</code> with the unit + 1. Cloning the SD-card (/dev/mmcblk0) to an image file (rpi.img).
+When done eject the SD-card and you'll have your Raspberry Pi image clone to a file
- sudo dd if=/dev/mmcblk0 of=rpi.img bs=512 count=3766272
-When done eject the SD-card
+==Clone file to card==
+ sudo dd bs=4M if=rpi.img of=/dev/mmcblk0
 ==from image file to card==

Clone RPi: Difference between revisions